by Anne Hope
Zach and Martin were still out searching. She was itching to join them, but she couldn’t. Someone had to stay at the house and watch over Will.
Sharp-toothed anxiety shredded her insides and left her all the more hollow. She should have known not to take happiness for granted. She’d forgotten how ephemeral it was.
An illusion.
Whenever she got a taste of it, it was snatched away.
She walked onto the porch and lowered her body onto the steps. Above her, stars sizzled, blind to the darkness that now enfolded her like a death shroud.
The impenetrable stillness only made her thoughts screech louder. The wound in her chest throbbed. These children had irrevocably changed her. She’d learned to hold them, to smile at them, but she’d failed to tell them she loved them. Now she might never get the chance.
In the distance she made out two blurry silhouettes. Seconds later, Zach and Martin cut through the shadows and approached her. Something cold and clammy tightened around her middle. They were alone.
“Still no sign of them,” Zach told her, his face a flat, unreadable mask. He was doing it again—hiding his emotions. Disappointment twined with sadness. The Iceberg was back.
Martin looked broken. Without a word, he heavily mounted the stairs and entered the house. Zach turned his back to her and stared at the unnaturally calm ocean. She could almost see the thoughts churning in his head.
“We’ll find them,” she reassured him in a gravelly voice she barely recognized.
His hand twitched, the only indication he’d heard her. “I knew I never should’ve left them with Martin.”
“You can’t possibly blame yourself for this.” But she knew he did. That was just the way he was made.
She stood and narrowed the distance between them, but refrained from touching him. Over the years, she’d learned to give him space when he was feeling this way. He needed room to beat himself up properly.
“I think maybe you were right all along,” he said. “Maybe we really are cursed.” She’d told him that once, weeks before their break-up.
She shook her head, even though he wasn’t looking at her. “I don’t believe that anymore. That was just my grief talking.” She closed her fingers around his arm, despite her better judgment. “We’re going to find them, Zach,” she said again because she needed to convince herself the words were true.
Muscles bunched beneath her fingers. Tension rippled through him, a sharp current of electricity that thrummed against her palm.
Please don’t give up, she whispered silently. Not this time.
The darkness seemed to deepen. It congealed around them as a cloud drifted across the nearly full moon. Without as much as a sigh, Zach pried his arm from her grasp and vanished into the house, leaving her with nothing but the wind to embrace her.
Never had dawn taken so long to come. Each dark hour had stretched into infinity. When the sun finally clawed its way out of the sea to part the gray curtains of mist that still hovered over the waves, Rebecca experienced an irrational sense of relief. None of them had slept that night except for Will. The penicillin had already kicked in, and, feeling better, the baby had finally succumbed to exhaustion.
Zach had lain in bed with his arm slung over his eyes, silent and unmoving, but she’d known he was every bit as conscious as she. He’d oozed tension from head to toe. Every inch of him was tight and hard, chiseled in stone.
She wanted to inch closer, to draw comfort from his solid body, but, afraid of invading the frosty barrier he’d erected around himself, she crawled out of bed and made her way downstairs instead.
She found Martin in the kitchen, inhaling a mug of coffee. He hadn’t bothered to shave. Stubble shadowed his cheeks. His hair stood out at strange angles and fell in wisps over his forehead. He wore the same clothes he’d worn yesterday—a white Polo over a pair of beige shorts. The shirt was wrinkled, the shorts creased, and that somehow made him look more human.
Rebecca couldn’t help the clutch of compassion that gripped her. Zach had every reason to blame Martin, but she could empathize with the man. She couldn’t begin to imagine how lousy he felt, knowing the kids went missing on his watch. The truth was, it could have happened to any one of them.
“Is there enough coffee for two?” she asked.
He jolted at the sound of her voice. “Yeah. I made a whole pot. I figured we’d need it today.”
She poured herself a healthy dose of the dark brew, then spiked it with a splash of milk.
“I never should’ve taken that call,” he told her.
She joined him at the table and took a hearty swallow, in desperate need of the caffeine boost.
“I cleared my schedule,” he insisted. “I wasn’t expecting to have to work. But then this client phoned me out of the blue and—”
“It’s okay, Martin. You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’m not interested in blaming anyone. All I care about is finding Noah and Kristen.”
Pain radiated from her chest at the mention of their names. Their faces flashed before her eyes again. She’d once thought nothing could be more devastating than mourning the children she’d never have, but she’d been wrong. Those children had been nothing more than an idea in her head. Noah and Kristen were real. They had faces and souls and smiles that could melt ice cream on a winter’s day. And she missed them. Missed them with a fervor that burned straight to the marrow of her bones.
“Do you think we will?” he asked her.
“We have to.”
He reached across the table, covered her hand with his in an effort to give—or perhaps receive—comfort. “What if we don’t?”
Rebecca placed her other hand over his and squeezed. The coffee suddenly tasted unbearably bitter on her tongue. “I can’t go there, Martin. Not even in my head. If I do, I’ll never climb back out again.”
Martin’s gaze fell to their joined hands. The look on his face told her he understood. “Then I won’t, either.”
Zach felt like a wreck when he clambered out of bed that morning. His muscles were taut, his neck strained, and a vicious headache pounded behind his eyes. Inside him a firestorm raged, hot and insistent, incinerating everything it touched. He didn’t think it was possible to feel any worse…until he entered the kitchen and found Becca holding hands with Martin.
Fury ignited in his veins. The bastard had cost him his kids, and now he was making a move on his wife. Right there and then, he regretted not having beaten him to a pulp yesterday. His hands fisted at his sides, but he managed to roll his anger into a tight ball and swallow it. It left an acrid taste in his mouth, so he went and poured himself some coffee.
From the corner of his eye, he caught a flicker of movement. Becca had pulled her hand away from Martin’s. “How are you feeling?” she asked him.
“How do you think?” He didn’t mean to be short with her, but he was infinitely annoyed with everyone at the moment, his ex-wife included.
“Did you sleep at all?” she persisted.
“Sure. If you consider staring at the ceiling all night sleep.” He approached the table and crashed into the chair beside her. “Are the cops here yet?”
“No,” Martin rasped.
Zach directed a withering look his way. “Why the hell not? They said they’d be here at sunrise.”
Becca rubbed her eyes, distressed. “Give them a chance.”
Zach was about to tell her exactly what he thought of the cops’ efforts so far, when the doorbell rang.
Today they’d brought the dogs. Becca had gathered up some of the kids’ belongings, and a handful of German Shepherds now combed the surrounding woods, hoping to pick up the scent. Zach had tagged along because he couldn’t bear to hang around just twiddling his thumbs the whole damn day. He needed to do something, even if all he could do was follow the cops around and make a nuisance of himself.
So far, nothing had turned up. He wasn’t sure whether that was a bad sign or a good one. At least they hadn’t found
their bodies, which meant they could still be alive. That hope was all he clung to now.
The hours stretched, endless threads of time that snaked toward another dusk. The hot sun beat down on them, harsh and unrelenting. Zach plowed ahead, so charred inside he felt nothing but a soft throb of emptiness beneath his ribs and a burning sensation in his gut. Fatigue clawed at him, but the adrenaline pulsing through his bloodstream kept it at bay. He couldn’t imagine ever sleeping again. Not until Noah and Kristen were found.
“I don’t think they’re out here,” Lieutenant Mason, the officer in charge, said.
“They have to be.” Zach’s pace matched the lieutenant’s. “Kids don’t just disappear. If they didn’t come this way, then they took to the sea. That would be pretty hard to do without a boat, unless…” He chased the thought from his brain. They couldn’t have drowned. Not both at once.
“The Coast Guard is checking things out at its end. Something’s bound to turn up.”
He wanted to believe the lieutenant, but the sizzling wound in his gut wouldn’t let him. It just grew bigger, rawer with each hour that passed. “Tell me the truth,” he said to the other man. “What are the chances we’ll find them alive?”
Lieutenant Mason’s somber expression said it all.
“That’s what I thought.” The wound turned gangrenous. Zach knit his brows against the pain. Straightening his back, he forged ahead, trekking between the shivering trees.
A cacophony of barks broke the eerie silence. The dogs sniffed at the ground, mere feet before the woods ended and another stretch of beach began. Lieutenant Mason sped ahead, with Zach close on his heels.
“Stay back,” the officer warned him, then crouched to study the ground.
“What is it? What did they find?”
“Footprints. Two sets from the looks of it. Judging from the sizes, they could very well belong to your kids.” The dogs sprinted out of the woods and up a steep incline toward a house. Zach and the cops quickly followed.
The back door was unlocked, but Lieutenant Mason didn’t enter. Instead, he whipped out his cell phone. “I need a search warrant for—” He turned to one of his detectives. “Get me the address to this place.”
“You gotta be kidding me.” Zach’s frustration bubbled and overflowed. “My kids could be in there and you wanna wait for a search warrant—”
Lieutenant Mason raised his index finger to silence him. The detective returned and handed him a piece of paper with the address, and he relayed the information to whomever he was talking to on the phone. “That’s right. On Ministers Lane. And make it quick.”
“This is bullshit.”
Mason skewered him with a pointed stare. “I have to do things by the book. This is private property. Unless I actually hear someone scream for help, I can’t enter without a warrant.”
“Yeah, well I can.” Shoving his way past the lieutenant, Zach bulleted into the house. “Noah, Kristen, you in here?”
The place was deserted. No furniture filled the hollow spaces, no frames decorated the walls and a thin carpet of dust blanketed the floors. Still, maybe the kids had come here to play, locked themselves in a room…
Lieutenant Mason and his crew reluctantly trailed behind him, weapons raised. “You’re compromising the investigation,” Mason accused. “Go back outside.”
“You can forget about it.” He raced to the foot of the stairs. “Noah, Kristen! Answer me.” He was about to sprint upstairs, when two detectives grabbed him and hauled his ass outside.
The lieutenant’s expression was lethal. “Don’t make me arrest you.”
“You honestly expect me to sit around like a goddamned idiot waiting for some stupid piece of paper when my kids could be inside that house hurt or worse?”
“Yes.” Mason’s tone didn’t falter. “That’s exactly what I expect.”
She sat at the edge of the shore, her arms wrapped around her waist, staring at the whitecaps as if they held the answer she so desperately sought. A few feet back, Will rolled in the sand, his mood greatly improved now that his ear no longer tortured him.
Rebecca wasn’t nearly as lucky. A million thoughts plagued her, none the least bit comforting. In her hand she clutched Kristen’s Ventolin. She’d found it in the children’s room that morning, which had only added to the questions, the worry.
What if Kristen had another attack? What if it was already too late?
She tamped down the anxiety, wiped the disturbing thoughts from her mind. She couldn’t think this way. She had to believe the kids would be fine. Otherwise her heart would fracture into a million fragments of grief, and she’d fall apart. What good would she be to them then? This time, she had to stay strong. Retreating into self-indulgent misery wasn’t an option.
Still, acid tears dampened her lashes, and she quickly blinked them away. Bolt ambled up beside her and whimpered. Lathering her face with a wet tongue, he tried to lick her anguish away. With a gasp that was half surprise, half sob, she hooked her arm around him and pressed him to her side, soothed by his warmth.
There was something immeasurably calming about a dog. The way it looked at you with sad eyes that never judged. The way it gave you a soft body to hold on to, even as the ground slowly rolled out from under you.
“What happened to them, boy?”
The puppy replied with a short bark.
She released a shaky sigh and scratched him. Bolt’s ears twitched. With an excited wag of his tail, he tore out of her embrace and vaulted into the bordering woods. He looked back at her, barked a few more times, then gazed out at the distant trees again. For a second she thought he was trying to tell her something. Then a squirrel dashed down from one of the trunks, and she shook her head in defeat.
Placing the pump back in her pocket, she dug her heels into the sand and stood.
“You’ve been out here for hours.” Tess’s voice startled her.
Rebecca slanted a glance her way. “I don’t know what else to do with myself. I’m going stir-crazy.”
“Where are the men?”
“Zach’s out with the search party. Martin went back home to pick up some things. He hadn’t planned on staying more than a day when he first showed up.” The wind rustled through the trees, caressed her face with invisible fingers. “Have you spoken to Pat?”
“I tried calling him several times. Can’t seem to reach him. Something big is going down. Knowing Pat, he’d going to want to be right smack in the middle of it, whatever it is.” Tess looked drawn. Her skin was paler than usual, and fine lines creased her forehead. “Why don’t you come inside? It’s almost suppertime. You haven’t eaten a thing all day. I’ve got a nice pot of soup simmering on the stove.”
“I don’t think I could eat. My stomach’s shrunk to the size of a raisin.”
Tess wrapped her arm around Rebecca’s. “But Will’s probably getting hungry.”
She was right, of course. Rebecca nodded heavily. She pulled free from Tess’s grasp and lifted the toddler, who squirmed in protest. “I should probably get him washed up first.”
“I’ll go whip together some sandwiches.” A smile fluttered over the neighbor’s lips but failed to mask the dark concern in her gaze. “Drop by whenever you’re ready.”
Rebecca nodded meekly, then slogged toward the house. Beneath a green canopy of trees, Bolt continued to watch her with imploring brown eyes, full of gentle sadness.
“I’m cold.” His sister shivered and pressed her lips together, now a frightful, purplish shade of blue. A real nasty cough clattered in her chest.
Noah drew her closer, tried to warm her with his body. They both wore nothing but T-shirts and shorts, and this place was cool and damp and smelled like rotten vegetables. He’d never had much use for vegetables, even the non-rotten kind.
They’d spent the night on the hard cement floor with nothing but each other for warmth. The room was bare, dirty. Above a row of huge wooden barrels, dust-speckled light poured in from a tiny window.
&
nbsp; Noah’s head felt heavy, full of cotton, like his mouth. A swarm of bees buzzed in his tummy. He didn’t want to die here in this damp, smelly room. He wanted to go back home, to hang out on the beach with Uncle Zach, to feel one of Aunt Becca’s flower-scented hugs again, even though he always pretended he didn’t like them. The bees suddenly stung, made an ache spread in his chest. He hadn’t realized until now how safe he felt with them. Almost as safe as he’d felt with his parents.
“I wanna go home,” Kristen echoed his thoughts, her mouth curling into a pout. Noah prayed she wouldn’t start bawling. “I don’t like it here.” Her breathing grew ragged.
He had to distract her before she got really upset. She didn’t have her asthma pump with her, and if she had an attack here…
He didn’t even want to think about it.
“Aunt Becca and Uncle Zach will find us,” he told her, not sure if she’d buy it when he didn’t even believe it himself.
“Why did he bring us here, Noah? I thought only bad guys took kids.”
Noah looked around the small room, empty except for the neatly stacked barrels beneath the window. On the floor beside them sat two bottles of water, two half-eaten sandwiches and a bag of stale chips.
“Guess he’s a bad guy.” He felt like a complete idiot for ever trusting Night-Owl. His dad had been right. Why hadn’t he listened? “Dad knew.”
Kristen looked at him with wet, curious eyes.
“He warned me.” Noah felt his own eyes sting. “This is all my fault.”
“It’s okay, Noah. You didn’t know. I liked him, too.”
Warmth expanded inside him. His sister could be pretty annoying sometimes, but deep down where it counted, she was all right.
He had to do something. It was up to him to protect her. The window drew his attention again. It was small, but so were they. They could use the barrels to climb up, crawl out…
He shot to his feet and ran to the other side of the room. Carefully, he began to scale the barrels.
“What are you doing?”
